Bartlett’s Blog

This week saw the fortieth anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). One thing that has often perplexed me is how much the public anxiety about the proliferation of nuclear and other armaments has diminished over the last twenty years. The end of the Cold War could explain some of it, but given the repeated references by various political leaders to the threat of terrorism, a ‘War on Terror’, rogue ...

Federal politicians understandably got a lot of correspondence expressing concern about the low level of the Age Pension. In amongst those that I got, every now and then there would be one which would assert that we have all had to pay extra income tax for the last sixty years for a fund which was supposed to have been used to provide for the pension but never has. As ...

As most readers would be aware, I have a bit more spare time at the moment than I’ve had for many a year, so I am trying to take the chance to do a few fun things that I have let slide. One of those things is having a go at doing a weekly shift on local community radio station 4ZZZ. I used to do this through the 1980s, ...

I know some people complain about how much coverage the election President of the USA is getting in Australia, but it has the potential to have a very significant effect on the future of the entire planet, so I think it’s worth following. Even though Barack Obama now seems to be doing the inevitable tilting to the centre that happens once every primary is concluded, he seems to ...

I must say, I didn’t think it would happen. But with an 85 per cent vote in favour of a Liberal-National merger amongst Qld Liberal party members who voted in a ballot on the issue, it now seems quite probable that the Liberal and National parties in Queensland will merge.  The report on the ABC website says that the Liberals have 3000 members in Queensland, which is much less ...

It is a truism that that all mainstream issues start off being fringe issues. I’ve campaigned on animal welfare issues since before I entered the Senate. Despite the fact that there is often widespread public opposition to animal cruelty, animal welfare is still generally treated as a fringe issue in politics, and usually in the media as well. Even though the general notion of significantly improving animal welfare standards ...

Today was my first day in over ten years without the word ‘Senator’ attached to the start of my name. Even though the end of the Democrats in the Senate is a tragedy, on a personal level it’s nice to finally be able to get on with doing other things. The election result was more than seven months ago, so it’s been a long wait to finally finish ...

The Senate Committee report into the sexualisation of children was tabled last week. It doesn’t seem to have pleased some of the children’s advocacy groups, or Family First for that matter. Clive Hamilton, who has campaigned on the issue for some time, is also pretty peeved, if his piece in Crikey is anything to go by – although I have to say I found his ‘pretend advertising industry memo’ a ...

I participated in a panel of speakers at the Microsoft Forum on Politics & Technology earlier this week, along with Antony Green, Joe Hockey, Kate Lundy and Matt Bai. It was an interesting discussion, although I did get a bit irritated that the debate seemed to keep turning inwards into a discussion about how politicians can more cleverly use internet technology to win votes, rather than examining how ...

Pretty much everything I did this week could have had a 'last time' label attached to it - last Party Room meeting, last Committee meeting, last Whips meeting, etc. I've avoided recording all of those, as it quickly gets rather tiresome. However, I thought I'd record the last Democrat question ever asked in the Senate. Partly because of that historic significance, but also because I think it is and ...

The potential of the Open Australia site that I linked to in this post has clearly raised the hopes and interest of a range of bloggers (like Peter Martin, The Podcast Network, Public Polity and LP). Kim at LP notes the site is based on a similar site in the UK.  Another good example of an independent effort to open up access to the workings of an important institution is this site called UN Democracy (also in the ...

Next week marks the end of the six year terms for 36 of the 76 Senators, and 14 of them will not be coming back when the new Senate sits again in August. The names of those replacing them are at this link.  Most of them have made or will be making Valedictory speeches in this final fortnight, and many of the remaining Senators also speak about their departing colleagues. ...

Understandably, there are plenty of media stories in recent times noting the imminent end of the Democrats' presence in the Senate. No doubt there'll be more over the next week or so. It was sweet to read in today's Courier-Mail editorial that the Democrats demise "is unfortunate". They state that the party "earned a deservedly high reputation for being scrupulous and tough in negotiation", their "achievements in that period ...

The Senate Committee report into my legislation on a compensation system for the Stolen Generations was tabled yesterday. The Committee didn't directly support a national system of compensation, but did put forward some other useful recommendations. You can read my additional comments at this link. The Daily Telegraph has invited me to 'debate' people and answers questions live through their website at 9am tomorrow (Wednesday). You can ask a ...

I've written a few earlier posts about the Senate Inquiry into Housing Affordability that was set up earlier this year. The Committee brought down its report yesterday – you can access it by clicking here. Whilst both I and the Greens' Senator Rachel Siewert added some additional comments, the report has 32 recommendations which had the unanimous support of Liberal and Labor Senators. I think it's a very good ...

Astute readers will have noticed a complete inability to access this blog for the last three weeks. The site got hit by a particularly virulent attack of spam which managed to get into many of my old and draft entries. I was planning to reformat it for when I finished in the Senate on June 30, so I took the opportunity while it was offline getting all the ...

The controversy surrounding the Bill Henson photographs coincided almost precisely with when this blog was offline. There has been extensive and often very interesting debate on a range of blogs, which I found more stimulating than most of what occurred in the mainstream media, which seemed to mostly reflect the extremes of the debate without much acknowledgement or engagement with the complexities of the issues raised. I had a ...

A Parliamentary Breakfast was held this morning to raise awareness of and support for autism. Breakfast functions arranged by community organisations are a regular feature at Parliament House. They are usually a straight-forward occasion, going for about an hour from 7.30, with a few speakers and some information about the topic. The speakers at this one included Katherine Annear (an adult with ASD) and John Doyle (better known ...

I am down in Canberra again this week for Senate Estimates – see this link for an idea of what Estimates are about. It is interesting to see how the Liberals are adapting to being on the questioning side and Labor Ministers being on the receiving end, after so many years of the reverse. It seems to me there is still some further adaptation required, in part due ...

After some of the public attacks on refugees from Africa which occurred in the lead up to last years election for allegedly 'not integrating', with the worst inferences being targeted at young males, it was good to see a story in today’s Australian newspaper highlighting the positive expectations for African refugees in the future of Australian soccer. Four African refugees - from Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia and Liberia – are ...